Content Marketing Creates Thought Leadership

Some of you emailed me after my last post asking for recommendations around the type of content to create for your clients. Obviously, this is a difficult question to answer in general terms. After all, the whole point of my last post was the value of the context of your content. So, it would be difficult for me to give you contextual advice without knowing more about your clients, their audience and competitive space.

That said, I will offer up some general guidelines and further discussion around the value of content marketing.

First of all the type of content you create should be driven by the type of audience you are after. Consumers spend a great deal of time on YouTube and Facebook. B2B audiences tend to focus more on LinkedIn and SlideShare. And, Twitter, podcasts and Blogs fit both … as long as what you say is relevant and useful.

2. Consistency breeds familiarity. It takes anywhere from 5 to 12 exposures for a new idea to stick. The more consistent you are with your value proposition in your content, the more people will connect your brand to your message.

3. Content brings brands and customers together. This is especially true when there is an interactive element to the content, like comments in a blog, LinkedIn Q&amp;A conversations or user-generated content campaigns.

4. Aggregation can set you apart. There is a flood of information online and Google can only give you a best guess at the most relevant, but there are millions and millions of pages returned for any search result. Aggregation sites like social bookmarks can help you connect your content with key audiences seeking it out.

5. Mashups can give you a unique edge. Merging existing content to create a new point of view can be a great way to leverage popular content. Taking multiple points of view on a particular issue and sharing it in a single location can be a terrific conversation-starter. More broadly, mashups can offer a way of creating something new while still using content curation as a basis for it because you are building on existing content.

6. Chronology is becoming more important as industries are evolving. We have seen incredible changes in so many industries in the past several years. Within marketing alone, we’ve seen the mashup of marketing disciplines like advertising and PR. One of the most interesting ways of looking at your content is to track the evolution of information is over time – and how our understanding of topics has changed over time.

Whether you are creating podcasts, blog posts, videos, SlideShares or participating in category-specific Q&A, the most important thing (behind context) is consistency. If you want your voice to have power, you have to power it with consistent content.

Jennifer Jones-Mitchell

A global leader in social media marketing, Jennifer Jones-Mitchell has been at the center of traditional and digital PR since the mid 90s and has helped launch some of the world's most loved brands. She has been blogging about PR and social media marketing since 2007. Learn more at: www.jenniferjonesmitchell.com